Why Girls Don't Code
Musings on the gender imbalance in the developer community

By Heather Nagey

This article was inspired by our upcoming sponsorship of the "Girls who Code" event in New York, covered in another article in this newsletter.

You only have to take a look at our user community to know there is a serious gender imbalance in the coding world. The guys outnumber the gals by at least 10 to 1. Why is this, and what, if anything, should be done about it?

The possible reasons fall into three categories:

1) Girls simply aren't capable of coding
2) Girls are brought up in an environment that does not encourage them to take up coding
3) There are no job opportunities for girls in the coding world

Can't Code? Seriously?

If you are going to get behind option 1, you had better have some really hard hitting statistical studies to back it up - and a very hard hat as well! While there may be something in the argument that men and women are not born identical, there just isn't any evidence that girls are not capable of the skills required in a successful coder. There is in fact plenty of evidence that they are, if they choose to take it up, and we have some outstanding ladies in our community. Of course not every girl has the mathematical bent and desire to spend her life in front of a computer - but neither has every boy! It seems perfectly plausible that just as many girls as boys would have the particular mindset required for a career in application development - so where are they?

Who Wants to be a Nerd?

Lets have a long hard look at option 2. In this liberated day and age, surely we bring up our girls to consider any career they like, just as we do our boys? Little girls play with cars these days, and little boys play with... dolls? Well. Do they? As a parent, do you encourage your little boy to go to nursery school dressed in pink and pushing his doll in a pram? If you do, I salute you. And I hope he does too, when he grows up and forgives you, because you and I both know what kind of reception he will get from his playmates*. I think society still has a long way to go on this. The pressure on boys to be boys is still very strong, and the pressure on girls to be pink and fluffy is still there, although a lot more subtle than it used to be. From my own personal experience, I'd say the reason my daughter has no interest in coding is far more about peer pressure and the interests of the friends she has grown up with than about her actual abilities. It's not even that girls are told "oh, maths is for boys and science is not for you..." It's much more that all her friends are playing at hairdressers and discussing fashion and make-up. Coding is not cool. It takes a fairly strong-minded and determined girl to decide, early on, that maths is what she loves and programming is where she wants to be. This may account for the exceptional quality of the ladies I know in the RunRev community!

Discrimination?

How about number 3? Do employers actually discriminate against female applicants for jobs? This may be the case sometimes, and my gut feeling would be that it gets harder to get development jobs as a female, the further up the ladder you get. But at the entry level, in RunRev we see far far fewer female applicants for jobs than male. We don't actively discriminate in favour of females, which makes it very hard to hire them when only around 5% of applicants are female. We have achieved one notable success here with our highly valued Elanor Buchanan, we'd love to see more like her.

More Elanors, What's the Solution?

So how is this to be achieved? The problem would appear to originate in girls at a young age just abandoning the paths that would take them to a coding career. This is a shame, as we ladies have a lot to offer in the workplace. We tend to be better communicators, and workplaces with a good gender balance tend overall to run more smoothly. It has been shown that women in top management are generally good for business.

Positive discrimination in favour of hiring females I'd say is a poor option. I doubt if many women would want to be hired just because they are women. Businesses cannot afford not to hire the best fit for the job, and given that 95% of applicants for developer positions are male, its highly likely the best applicant for most positions will be a man. It would be grossly unfair not to hire him in favour of someone who can do the job less well, just because she is female.

The solution has to lie in changing the attitudes of society, starting with promoting coding early on, and presenting it as a cool option to girls. Get a group of friends interested together, and you may be onto a winner. In time, we should see more female developers feeding through the system. Which brings me back to where I started. The "Girls Who Code" initiative is to be highly commended, and I hope we see many more like it, around the world. Maybe you can start one, in your area?

*YMMV. I'd love to think there are communities somewhere in the world now where this is perfectly normal and would not cause even a raised eyebrow. I can only tell you it's not the case in the particular community I live in. At the age of 3, my little boy loved ballet classes. By age 4, he'd learned it was socially unacceptable and stopped going.

About the Authors Heather Nagey is Customer Services Manager for RunRev Ltd